Spokane Woman's Club

The Woman’s Club located at the corner of West Ninth Avenue and Walnut Street is a beautiful and enduring fixture of Spokane’s South Hill neighborhood. Although the structure visitors see today has benefited from periodic additions and modifications over time, the building originally constructed in 1929 was largely as one sees it now. This was, however, not the first structure. The first iteration of the Woman’s Club was a small clubhouse built in 1910, situated on the site of the current Club. In 1928, the members replaced it with a larger building, designed by renowned Spokane architect Gustav Perhrson, who also designed the Garland Theater, the Roosevelt Apartments, and the Paulsen Building among many other notable Spokane sites.[1]

The history of this building really begins with the formation of the Spokane Women’s Club in 1905. Shortly thereafter, the Club organized itself under the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). These larger women’s organizations were by and large a product of the late nineteenth century Progressive Era in which women, unable to vote until 1920, instead exerted influence through a variety of associations on a wide range of causes such as temperance, children’s education, better sanitation, and better working environments. Woman’s Club scrapbooks going back to 1910 (currently archived at the Spokane Museum of Art and Culture) indicate that its members were involved in all of these causes and others. According to a Spokesman Review article from 1912, women also used the Club for more recreational pursuits, such as china painting, water color design and other things classified as “women’s education” in the early twentieth century.[2]

It seems that the Club members had substantial clout with the community, too. Membership rolls from as far back as 1905 suggest that the Club had a consistent and vibrant membership neighborhood from its inception, including prominent residents of the affluent Browne’s Addition. Indeed, the Woman’s Club and others like it likely played a significant role in securing Women’s Suffrage in the State of Washington in 1910, a full decade ahead of the nineteenth Amendment.[3]

The Woman’s Club has been carefully preserved over the years and still retains its original charm. All of the architectural features are in near-perfect condition, including a beautiful terra cotta lunette inscribed with the Club’s motto, “The Club that Bids You Welcome,” over the entrance way, beneath which is a rectangular panel bearing the Club’s name. The Woman’s Club is used by a number of groups for a wide variety of community events, and is rented out for the occasional wedding reception or family reunion. It is, however, first and foremost still the meeting place for the modern GFWC whose “members [are] dedicated to strengthening their communities and enhancing the lives of others through volunteer service.”[4] The Spokane Woman’s Club, which stands today a striking example of early twentieth century commercial-style architecture, is testament to this dedication.

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[1] City of Spokane Historic Preservation Office, “Roosevelt Apartments,” and  “the Paulsen Building,” http://properties.historicspokane.org/; “The Garland Theater” from the Cinema Treasures Website, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/11431;

[2] “Secrets of Spokane Woman’s Club Allurements Discovered and Divulged by Merciless Males,” Spokane Spokesman Review, December 8, 1912.

[3] “Women’s Suffrage” from the Washington Women in History website, http://www.washingtonwomenshistory.org/themes/suffrage/default.aspx;

[4] “The General Federation of Women’s Clubs” from the GFWC website, http://www.gfwc.org/gfwc/default.asp.